Mitt: No more 'distance' from Israel

JERUSALEM – Taking his campaign to the Holy Land, Mitt Romney Sunday made the case to Israelis and Jewish voters in America that he would take a harder line with Iran and be a more steadfast ally to Israel than President Barack Obama.

Romney, who pledged not to criticize the president while on his week-long trip abroad, drew only implicit contrasts with Obama in a speech at dusk here in front of a sweeping valley and the Old City’s Tower of David. But the Republican’s criticism was unmistakable and the mix of conservative Israelis and Romney donors in the audience repeatedly responded with applause.

“It is sometimes said that those who are the most committed to stopping the Iranian regime from securing nuclear weapons are reckless and provocative and inviting war,” Romney said from a podium that featured linked American and Israeli flags and the words “Freedom and Democracy. “The opposite is true. We are the true peacemakers. History teaches with force and clarity that when the world’s most despotic regimes secure the world’s most destructive weapons, peace often gives way to oppression, to violence, or to devastating war.”

That was almost certainly a reference to Obama’s March speech to AIPAC where he decried “loose talk of war.”

And two days after Obama held an Oval Office event to sign legislation increasing military aid to Israel, Romney took another barely veiled swipe at the administration which at times has had a frosty relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

“Standing by Israel does not mean with military and intelligence cooperation alone,” Romney said. “We cannot stand silent as those who seek to undermine Israel, voice their criticisms. And we certainly should not join in that criticism. Diplomatic distance in public between our nations emboldens Israel’s adversaries.”

Indeed, Romney’s trip here - the leg of his foreign sojourn that came directly after his gaffe-plagued stop in London for the Summer Olympics - seemed geared largely toward signaling to both Netanyahu and Israel-minded voters in America that there would be no such frost toward Jerusalem in a Romney administration.

The former Massachusetts governor, once a co-worker with Netanyahu at the Boston Consulting Group, met privately with the Israeli leader in the morning.

“We have a friendship that spans the years,” Romney said as he sat side-by-side with his old colleague.

Later, at the start of his address, the GOP nominee again spoke warmly of the man known here as “Bibi”

“Ours is not an alliance based only on shared interest but also on enduring shared values,” Romney said of America and Israel. “In those shared values one of the strongest voices is that of your Prime Minister, my friend Benjamin Netanyahu. I met with him earlier this morning and I look forward to my family joining his this evening as they observe the close of this fast day of Tisha B’Av Day.”